I apologize for the super cheesy post title, but I couldn’t resist. Now, you might think I’m celebrating being vegan for a year perhaps, but you would be wrong. Today, I’m celebrating the small milestone of being vegan for one whole month. This is big guys.

For the past couple years I have wanted to go vegan, or at least vegetarian, but did neither. Instead, I criticized my brother and his wife for being vegan. Lashing out was my modus operandi, until I realized I was just envious of their ability to do it and to have that kind of discipline. Food was the part of my life where I had almost zero discipline. Food has always been my biggest weakness. Until now.

For the last month, I don’t even know if I physically feel different yet because I’m too caught up in how awesome I feel emotionally after simply making the decision to go vegan and being able to stick with it. To be clear, my decision had nothing to do with my food addictions, but it has really given me strength just knowing I can overcome them. Some foods I thought I could never live without, I don’t even miss.

So if not to overcome my food issues, why then you might be asking?… The reasons to be vegan just simply outweighed the reasons not to.

My reason why not to be vegan:

“I just can’t do it, food is too important to me.”

My reasons why to be vegan:

*Environment/Politics – Factory farms are the leading cause of global warming. Factory farms mistreat workers (not to mention the animals).

*Health – Animal protein is the leading cause of heart disease.

*Animals – I care too much about animals to eat them or support what is done to them at factory farms.

Now, if you’re not vegan you might be asking, can one person really contribute to changing those HUGE issues? The answer is yes, all change starts with one person. For a very long time, only 1% of our population was vegan and over the last year that has doubled.

Maybe even some of you who are on the fence will be inspired by this post and decide to go vegan. I can only hope this is the case, even if just one of you.

If you’re already vegan, I welcome tips, advice and recipes of course.

**Digital Illustration: Ongoing project of mine turning Instagrams into vector drawings. This was my niece on her 18th birthday.

thanks for sharing! I’ve been vegan for almost four years now, and it’s without a doubt the best and most important decision I’ve made in my life.. the more you learn and the more support you find, going back isn’t even an option, I would never even consider it.. so congrats, and keep on truly living your values! :)

obxmaureenCommented on Wednesday, May 7, 2014

It is amazing how emotionally liberating it is to take animal exploitation out of one’s life. Thanks for sharing this Cori. i found this post from the CitizenRadio email. As far as recipes, my most favorite one to share is the herbed macadamia ricotta on vegnews’s site. google double cheese vegan lasagna. I make lasagna rolls with fresh noodles using durham flour and The Vegg baking mix egg replacer and this ricotta. My nonveg extended family LOVED the rolls. They left the traditional cruelty based lasagna and devoured mine :)